As an early proponent of the socialist and labor reform movements in Great Britain, Katharine St. John Conway Bruce Glasier lived according to socialist principles and energetically attempted to popularize and defend socialism through her lectures and writings. Glasier received a feminist education at Cambridge, and her writing often addresses the difficulties and inadequacies of the contemporary womans current social and political circumstances. She is also remembered as the only woman to be a founding member of the Independent Labour Party and as the first female member of its National Administrative Council.

Born on 25 September 1867 in Ongar, Essex, Katharine St. John Conway was the eldest of seven children. Her mother, Amy Curling Conway, was the daughter of an important Stoke Newington family, and her father, Samuel Conway, was a Congregational minister. Soon after her birth her father was called to the pulpit in Walthamstow, where Katharine spent her...